NPP Grassland: Lamto, Ivory Coast, 1965-1987


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Photograph: A storm during the rainy season at Lamto (click on the photo to view a series of images from this site).

Data Citation

Cite this data set as follows:

Menaut, J.-C. 1996. NPP Grassland: Lamto, Ivory Coast, 1965-1987. Data set. Available on-line [http://www.daac.ornl.gov] from Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Active Archive Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, U.S.A.

Description

Productivity of a humid grass savanna was determined at the Lamto study site operated in collaboration with CNRS (Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique) - École Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. Measurement of monthly dynamics of above-ground plant matter (i.e., live biomass and dead matter for some years, total biomass in other years), and total roots (live + dead), were monitored from 1969 to the present. Net primary production has been estimated for both above and below-ground, although more data is available on the former.

The 2500-hectare Lamto Research Station (6.22 N 5.03 W) is situated 200 km north of Abidjan, near the town of Divo, at the southern edge of the humid savanna belt bordering the forest. The savanna is characterized by annual burning during the dry season in February, and by its high efficiency of nitrogen utilization. Nitrogen is remobilized from senescing leaves, and is very rapidly assimilated from decomposing plant residues without entering the soil pool of mineral nitrogen. The grass savanna occurs within a mosaic of grass, shrub, and tree savannas distributed according to drainage, slope and micro-topology.

Discontinuous data are available 1969-1986, including the effects of annual burning. Total net primary production (NPP) of the grass savanna has been estimated at 2150 g/m2/yr, of which 1320 g/m2/yr (61%) is below-ground production.

An earlier data set for a single year, thought to be mid-1960s, has been extracted from the literature, but this gives much higher biomass values and is probably less reliable.

Contact Information

Contact: Dr. J.-C. Menaut
Laboratoire d'Ecologie
ENS / CNRS-URA258
46 Rue d'Ulm
75230 Paris Cedex 05
FRANCE

Telephone: +33 (1) 4432-3708
Fax: +33 (1) 4432-3885
E-mail: menaut@wotan.ens.fr

Click on the following linked phrase to view references and summaries. More detailed information is available in the associated guide document.

Graphs Image Click on the "Graphs" box to view a series of data plots for this site, e.g., biomass dynamics, climate data.